


Metamorphosis

by NightsMistress



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Amnesia, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-12 22:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19238209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: Everything begins (ends) on the Moonlight Bridge





	Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ysavvryl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysavvryl/gifts).



Everything begins (ends) on the Moonlight Bridge.

He awakens with a gasp, half-rising into a sitting position before falling back as his vision blurs. Pain wracks his body, leaving him weak and trembling in its wake. He cannot catch his breath, and he forces himself to breathe around the stabbing pain in his chest. The pain is more than physical, more potent than any pain from his minor injuries. There is something missing from him, torn away and discarded, and he chokes around its absence.

When he can, he opens his eyes.

The moon hangs, pendulous and strange, in a sky dyed a lurid green. Long pillars reach up to the sky, trying to claw at the moon and throw it to the ground. There are no stars to be seen. The city is silent, and there are no signs of life. The loudest thing in this moment outside of time is his breathing. This does not surprise him, though he does not remember why it is so. The asphalt is gritty against his bare shoulder blades, his back exposed to the elements through the tattered remains of his shirt. The smell of blood, oil and coolant makes his stomach twist. Smoke fills his lungs, and coughing only makes his pain worse.

It’s cold. The wind, chilled from the river that flows below him, steals away his body heat with greedy fingers. He shivers and that hurts. He breathes and that hurts. He exists, and that hurts. He has never experienced pain before, and the sheer raw presence of it makes him shudder in revulsion. His body is a too-small cage that fetters him, and he has been cut down to fit inside. The wounds are hideous, raw and deep. What else could they be, when they are the result of his being reduced to a shadow of his former self?

What has happened to him?

He sits up to find the answers to that question, steeling himself against the pain that tears through him once more. He blinks away tears and forces himself to see, focus, and understand.

The burning wreckage of the nearby car does not hold his answers. He can see two people inside, trapped in the front seats, and knows at a glance that they are dead. The other him, the one sleeping inside him, sees them and cries out _Mommy! Daddy!_ His parents, then? He has no memories of parents, and does not understand the flashes of sensation from the other person inside him of a warm lap and loving hands patting his head. Strange, to learn that you have parents on the moment of their passing. He looks at them as their bodies burn and feels nothing at all. He’s seen death before, and it holds no mysteries for him.

The mechanical doll also has no answers for him. It is not dead. In fact, he does not know if it can die at all. It is collapsed in a heap of metal limbs and coolant. Long, curved marks across its torso and arms expose circuitry and framework. Its blue eyes are dull, and it does not react as he walks towards it on unsteady legs. He stops just before he steps into a puddle of coolant, and studies it from a few feet away. It does not move despite his presence. He is — he is afraid of it. Even now, that it is nothing more than a broken-down machine, he fears what it could do. He does not remember what this doll has done to him, but the terror and fury remains.

He breathes in the wind-chilled air, arms wrapped around his chest, and shivers. Something terrible has happened to him, and he cannot understand how it was done. His memories are as intangible as mist, easily dispersed as his fumbles towards them. He knows he exists for a purpose, but he cannot remember what it is and how he is to do it. All he knows is that the moment will not come for some years yet. That is a small comfort; he has time yet to find his purpose. To remember who and what he is.

His head falls back and he gazes up at the moon. The moon looks back to him, serene and indifferent.

“I’ll come back,” he promises, his voice thin and thready. A child’s voice, to go with his child’s body. “When it is time, I will return. Please, wait until then.”

The moon accepts his promise and he falls. He can rest now until it is time for him to complete his duty. Until then, his other self, the original owner of this body, can live his life. He closes his eyes and cedes control.

Arisato Minato opens his eyes to a nightmare on the Moonlight Bridge. Everything hurts, an agony more intense than anything he has experienced before. He turns his head slightly and can see a robot lying on the road near him. Her eyes are dull and lifeless, shadowed by her shaggy blonde hair, and he can see wires and metal rods sticking out of her. There’s a fire nearby, burning hot enough to make his skin hurt, and he does not understand what has happened. Who has done this to him? Where is everyone? Why is he outside on the road? Where are his parents? He’s meant to be a big boy, but he wants nothing more than for his parents to scoop him up, hug him and tell him that everything will be all right.

Instead, there is someone talking to him inside his head, telling him that he’s been in a car accident. His parents cannot help him, because they died in the car accident, but he was lucky enough to get out of the wreckage with only scratches. He must lie still and wait for rescue, because he cannot die yet. They must return to Iwatodai when he is older, because there is something very important that must be done. Minato doesn’t understand. The person talking to him sounds like someone his age, but they use complicated words that he does not understand. It’s like an adult is talking to him, and that’s why the words aren’t right. It’s not comforting. Everything is _wrong_ , and he hurts too much to try and understand it.

He starts to sob, tears streaking down his temples to pool in his ears. Nobody comes to help him. There’s no sign of life at all in Iwatodai. He’s never experienced anything as quiet as the city right now. It’s like everything and everyone has gone away, leaving him alone with his pain underneath a pitiless green sky.

He wails on the road until the sky changes from green to blue-black, and Iwatodai springs back to life once more.

***

It’s been ten years since he made the promise to the moon, and he still does not know what he is meant to do. After the day of his birth, he has tried to remain a passive observer in Minato’s life, watching from within his prison of Minato’s soul. His cage is a memory of a sleeping boy, safe inside his room from anything that can harm him, with the windows reflecting what Minato experiences.

He has tried to be a passive observer. This failed. Minato has grown into a withdrawn, emotionally muted young man, drifting through life without making connections. He has done this to Minato entirely unknowing; he had no need or understanding of friendship, and so Minato has never learned what it is and that he needs it. Minato is lost without connections to help him navigate his way through life, and is so inured to loneliness that he does not recognize that he is lonely.

He recognizes that Minato is lonely, because he is lonely as well.

He takes on a name, Pharos, because names have meaning. He is a beacon for someone to find their way through unknown waters. That is his purpose, but for now he can practice using Minato. The time has not yet come for Pharos to be able to guide Minato fully. It is only recently that he can talk to Minato at all, because Minato has awakened to the Dark Hour. It is only because Minato’s world shifts towards Pharos’s cage during that liminal space that Pharos is able to shape his actions. There are so many new concepts that he can experience through Minato’s eyes, and he wants to explore them all.

(He wants the person he was born to guide to be Minato. If he guides Minato to find his reflection in others, than maybe he can find himself reflected as well.)

“It’s nice being able to talk to you like this,” Pharos says, the night after Minato defeats the second Shadow of the Major Arcana. Minato had collapsed into bed immediately after finishing school, his blazer discarded on the floor in a way that will leave deep wrinkles in the fabric by the time dawn comes. The blazer near Pharos’ feet is not the true blazer, but instead a cognitive duplicate of it, replicated in Pharos’ prison for reasons beyond his understanding.

“Were you talking to me before?” Minato asks.

“No,” Pharos says quickly. “You wouldn’t have heard me if I had tried. But I didn’t want to. I wanted you to live your life as you chose.”

“What changed?”

“I didn’t understand at first, but I’m not the only lonely one here.” Pharos smiles at Minato. “I want to help you. You don’t have to accept it, but I’d like it if you did.”

Minato looks at him impassively, his expression partially obscured by his hair.

“All right,” he agrees finally. “It’s … not terrible, making friends here.”

Pharos looks up at the window. He can feel the pending change from the Dark Hour to normal time as if it were his own heartbeat, and he knows he only has a few moments left.

“Thank you,” he makes sure to say, before their worlds separate and he’s alone once more. He tells himself that he is alone and not lonely; he has one friend but he does not need any more. It is for humans to care about other humans. He only needs to care about one.

(He thinks, later, that he should have told Minato to pick up his blazer before Mitsuru sees it.)

***

Minato looks tired from a weekend spent scaling Taratus, sleeping in a loose-limbed sprawl that will do nothing to ease the aches and pains in battle. There are butterfly bandages holding a cut closed on his exposed forearm, and his shoulder is hunched to protect an overworked muscle. The Shadows within Tartarus are stronger the higher SEES climb, but they are becoming battle-hardened as well by the constant struggle forward.

To Pharos’ surprise, Minato has been the driving force behind scaling Tartarus. He pushes them all on, determined to reach its heights as quickly as possible to understand the meaning behind its existence. Prior to his arrival at Iwatodai, Minato did not show much interest in anything. It’s a fascinating development, but now is not the time to tease out what that means. He has something else he must do.

“Hello,” he says.

Minato starts awake, staring at him wide eyed. Recognition dawns, and his expression shifts back to its usual neutral indifference. He sits up with a wince, his arm propped on his lap and shielded by his other hand.

“I see you followed my advice,” Pharos says, sitting on the bed. He’s careful not to jostle Minato; dreamed injuries are real in this space. “I’m pleased. Your making friends means that I get to see sides of you that no one else can see. You have so much potential.”

Minato waits politely for Pharos to finish.

“I’d like it if you were to make friends with Chihiro.”

Despite having secured Minato’s agreement earlier, Pharos does not make requests of Minato frequently. He has, simply by being inside Minato, shaped his life in ways that Pharos regrets. However, he sees similarities between Chihiro’s shyness and Minato’s muted emotional state. Both struggle to make connections with people. Chihiro yearns for them, while Minato was only beginning to understand the need inside him for bonds. They are different, yet similar, and Pharos wants to understand why.

“Why her?” Minato asks. It is a good question.

“I don’t know,” Pharos admits. “She’s not like you, but she reminds me of you. I don’t understand why I think that.”

“You want to?” Minato asks.

“Yes.” Pharos frowns. “I want to understand why I want to understand. I’ve never needed to before now.”

Minato studies him, a clear-eyed gaze that makes him look older than he is. He sees more than other people his age. Pharos finds himself wondering what Minato sees when he looks at him.

“All right,” Minato promises. “I’ll do my best. No promises.”

Pharos rises to his feet and walks around Minato’s room. He’s careful to avoid the discarded sword and Evoker, because even if they are not real to Minato, they could be real to him. He looks at the moon, a baleful yellow presence in the green sky, and thinks he might remember something.

Then it is gone, as if the moment had never been, leaving him only with a sense of time ticking down.

“Don’t force yourself,” he says, turning back to Minato. “But I think it’s important. For you to be ready when the time comes, you must be your best self.”

Minato hums briefly, acknowledging Pharos’ warning. He swallows, but there is no suggestion of apprehension or fear when he asks, “What is coming?”

“I don’t know,” Pharos confesses. “But you haven’t much time left. That much, I know. Please, make your time count. Talk to her. Become her friend.”

Minato nods and settles back onto his pillow. He slips back into sleep as Pharos watches.

(The premonition of time slipping through their fingers is troubling. Pharos has never been concerned with the passage of time. Now he is.)

***

Fall begins with a blast of gusty wind strong enough that even the most dedicated SEES member would choose to stay inside rather than be buffeted by its fury. Pharos knows that the winds will calm before the next full moon, and so does not feel selfish monopolizing Minato’s time so close to when the next Major Arcana’s Shadow will appear. Minato has learned something while awake that Pharos wants — needs — him to explore.

This time, Minato has carelessly left his bedroom window ajar, and the wind is in the process of prising it open further. Pharos wants to close it, but it would achieve nothing for Minato so he refrains. He instead does nothing, content to watch Minato and wait for his moment to speak.

Minato stirs under Pharos’ gaze, swallowing and rubbing at his face to force himself to wake up faster. It’s a routine that Pharos has seen Minato perform often over the last months. It’s endearing. Fondness is not an emotion he is used to experiencing, but as Minato’s social circle expands Pharos becomes something new. His metamorphosis should frighten him. Unlike Minato, he is not a being designed for change. He doesn’t mind it, because now he is mirroring Minato rather than Minato mirroring him.

“We meet again,” Pharos says with a smile. “It seems so long since we last spoke, but it wasn’t. Not truly. You’ve just been working so hard in Tartarus that it’s been hard for us to meet like this.”

“Sorry,” Minato mumbles. He sits up and pulls his blanket around him to ward off the wind.

“I don’t mind,” Pharos assures him. “What’s important to you is important to me. Scaling Tartarus, defeating the Shadows — they’re important to both of us.”

Minato looks at him silently, obviously considering his words, before asking, “Is something troubling you?”

“Yes,” Pharos says. “How did you know? I didn’t tell you.”

Minato smiles wryly. “Your expression gave it away.”

Pharos feels his face with his fingertips, brushing against his knitted brow and thin-pressed lips. That he has an expression feels strange. He feels strange, and that strangeness is reflected on his face.

“Akinari says that he has accepted his death, but has he?” he says in explanation. “There’s something he regrets, something left undone.”

“His stories.”

Minato says it like it is the most obvious thing in the world. Perhaps it is. Pharos had not noticed it until now, but Minato’s ability to understand people has developed with remarkable swiftness. If Minato says it is so, then it must be.

“I see. Can you help him tell his last story?”

Minato looks troubled, pulling at a fraying thread on his sleeve.

“I don’t know much about fiction,” he says.

Pharos knows he is lying, but does not know why Minato is lying about this.

“Will you help him?” he presses. “Will you help him to accept his own death?”

Minato continues to look troubled, looking up at the fall of his hair at Pharos.

“Should I?” he asks quietly. “Why should he accept his death?”

“It is inevitable,” Pharos says gently. “Everyone will die one day. Isn’t it better to die with no regrets than to die in fear and terror?”

Minato swallows and looks away. Pharos wants to ask more, to ask why the thought of death scares Minato, but he is fading away as the Dark Hour ends, and he does not have the time.

(Minato does as he asks, and Akinari’s spirit is finally able to find peace. Unfortunately Minato is still afraid of death. Pharos tries not to feel hurt.)

***

The nights are becoming cooler, and Minato sleeps heavily underneath his blanket. Soon, he will need another one to shield him from the night air as he sleeps. It’s an existence that Pharos envies - the cold is an abstract concept to him. He longs for physicality, to feel the cold as it cuts into his body and makes him huddle inside his clothes for warmth. But that is for the living, and Pharos knows that he is something else.

“You’ve been working hard,” Pharos says in way of greeting. Minato stirs and looks at Pharos blankly. Comprehension dawns slowly as he squints at Pharos. It’s a very subdued reaction compared to the times that Minato startled awake to stare at Pharos’ with a clear eyed gaze. Then again, those days were before Minato had spent months defeating Shadows.

“I’ve been thinking about love,” Pharos says. “Is it possible to love someone you don’t know? Your friend in the video game loves someone she has never met. She may not even really want to meet them. How can you love someone if you don’t know them?”

Minato remains silent, waiting for Pharos to finish thinking aloud. It’s one of the things that Pharos likes most about Minato: he’s one of the rare people who can listen in silence, without offering judgment or commentary. Even now, while visibly exhausted with a bruise marring the skin of his cheek, Minato is attending to Pharos’ words.

“Perhaps it is better than she never does meet you,” Pharos muses. “The illusion of who you are may be what allures her to you. But … I want to know more anyway. Please, spare some time to play the game this weekend. I want to see her again.”

“You do?” Minato says, his voice rough with sleep. “All right. I’ll get my homework done on Saturday.”

“Thank you,” Pharos says, truly grateful. Minato’s attention to his studies has improved immeasurably since he transferred to Gekkoukan High, from half-hearted completion of his assignments to regular and diligent study. It could be because Minato feels the same time pressure that Pharos does, that time is precious and fleeting and he cannot waste any moment of this year.

It could also be because he’s trying to impress someone.

“I’ve been wondering,” Pharos says. “Is it possible for you to love someone like that?”

“No,” Minato says. “I’m not interested in anything like that.” His flat indifference is reminiscent of the old Minato, the one before he had awakened to his full potential.

“No? That’s said,” Pharos says, sighing. “I think you should try it. You might like it, but you’ll never know unless you make the time.”

Minato shrugs. “I suppose. If I get the time.”

It’s as good as a promise, and Pharos takes Minato at his word.

(In retrospect, he should have foreseen that Minato would end up in a romantic relationship with every girl he met.)

***

Winter has set in with a vengeance, and Minato is curled up underneath two thick blankets. Exhaustion lines his face, leaves its mark in the shadows pooling under his eyes, but he awakens readily when Pharos moves forward to sit on the bed.

“You’ve changed,” Minato observes. Minato has never spoken first in their sessions, and that sets Pharos to thinking. It’s always been Pharos talking and Minato listening. They had started talking so that Pharos could understand himself after he awoke on the Moonlight Bridge with no memories of his past life. He had thought that if he could understand humanity he could find the missing parts of himself. Now, he does it because he genuinely wants to know whether the people in Minato’s life are happy, and if Minato can ease their pain.

“I have, haven’t I?” Pharos marvels. “I want to know more about all of your friends. They’re all important to me.”

Minato smiles, small and fleeting, and utterly transforms his face. It’s a rare expression from him, and one that Pharos has never seen directed his way. He can understand why people struggle to improve themselves with Minato’s help, if this smile is their reward.

“You care about them,” Minato says. “I wondered how long it would take for you to realize that.”

Pharos laughs, because what Minato says is true and he is delighted that it is true. It is not just that he cares. It is that he is now an existence capable of caring. As Minato has grown into his true self, the self he would have been had Pharos not been sealed inside him ten years ago, he has expanded Pharos’ horizons as well. It is a beautiful gift, and one that he doubts even Minato fully appreciates.

“That’s right,” he says. “I’m not your persona. I am not the mirror that reflect you, the self you cannot escape. I am another you, one that has become more like you as time passes rather than your being like me.”

From Minato’s puzzled frown, he does not understand Pharos’ meaning.

“Don’t worry,” Pharos says gently. “You don’t have to understand. It’s enough that I understand what I have become.”

He looks around at Minato’s dormitory room, marked indelibly with his presence. There is proof everywhere of the lives that he has touched: tacky souvenirs from daytrips on dust-free shelves, framed photographs of teenagers making faces at the camera, precious and fragile reminders preserved behind glass. Minato left his old school without attachments, drifting from day to day without leaving his mark on the world. The Minato that Pharos knows now is an important part of many people’s existence.

And Pharos had had something to do with that. Pharos had asked, and Minato had changed, and then he changed as well. He smiled at the thought.

“When next we meet, who will you be then? Who will I be? I look forward to finding out.”

(He would never have said this, had he known what was to come.)

***

Everything ends (resumes) on the Moonlight Bridge.

Thanatos awakens with a gasp, hand over his face to stop the visions that enter his mind. He is left weak and trembling under the onslaught of memories. He cannot catch his breath, and he forces himself to breathe around the stabbing pain in his chest. The pain is not physical, more potent than pain from any injury he has sustained as Mochizuki Ryoji. His missing self has returned to him, and he chokes under its weight.

Not that he has time to weep over what he has done. Not while Aigis is intent on throwing her life away in a futile quest to kill him. He raises his hand to shield himself from Palladion’s spear. Aigis is pouring everything she has into her attack, but she cannot harm him. He is far more than the broken being she sealed away in a child ten years ago, and even then she was barely able to contain him. Now, it is nothing to hold her off.

He looks up to the sky. The moon hangs, pendulous and strange, in a sky dyed a lurid green. The pillars of the Moonlight Bridge reach up to the sky, trying to claw at the moon and throw it to the ground. He understands why the world rejects and fears the moon now. It is a harbinger of destruction. The city is silent but for the whir of Aigis’s components, her declarations of her raison d’etre, as the two are suspended in a moment outside of time. Smoke from her overheated circuitry fills the air, and Ryoji coughs. It doesn’t hurt. He thinks that it should.

It’s cold, despite the fact that nothing can touch him behind his shield. For all of Aigis’ fierce will, she cannot scratch him. The only method to harm him now is what he wills to harm him. He is free of pain, free of the cage that had fettered him for ten years, only to find himself fettered by something far more difficult to break. He is chained, and he is the one who wrought the shackles.

What has happened to him? _He did._

His breath comes in gasps as he realizes exactly what he has done. He is the Appriser, the lighthouse to Nyx as she ushers the world into the death it cries out for. He is the catalyst for the Fall, and when it comes everyone he has come to love will die. He is helpless to avert this fate; his existence has ensured its inevitability. By encouraging Minato to make friends, expand his horizons, and ease the suffering of the people around him, Thanatos has been thoughtlessly cruel. Death should be incapable of cruelty, but Thanatos is now aware that unspeakable terror and dread follow in his wake.

Aigis falls, collapsing into a heap of metal limbs and coolant. High pressure steam hisses from every joint. She can fight no longer, and she stares up at him in resignation and dread. She is afraid of him. He is afraid of him.

“How do I make amends?” he asks Aigis. She has no answers for him. She is still conscious despite the sparks running the length of her body. Her limbs twitch spasmodically. She does not react as he walks towards her on unsteady legs. She can’t. He had warned her that she could not harm him, and it would be foolish for her to try. “Aigis, please. Tell me. How do I make this right?”

“I do not know,” she says around the spasms that shake her frame. “Why do you want to? Do you not exist to bring about the Fall?”

“Because,” Thanatos — Ryoji — Pharos — he doesn’t know which one he is now. Perhaps Ryoji, the boy who loved everyone in his short life. “Because I love them, and I don’t want them to suffer.”

At this, Aigis raises her handgun. She trains it on him, holding it steady with both hands. Her expression is resolute.

“Die for them,” she commands. “That will stop the Fall.”

Ryoji isn’t sure whether he laughs or sobs in reply. He wraps his arms around himself and shivers. “No, it won’t,” he manages. “The Fall has already begun.”

Aigis lets her gun fall to the ground. She stares up at Ryoji. “Then I have failed.”

She has. There is nothing anyone can do now to avert the Fall. It is what humanity call out for. SEES burns bright against the dark, but they are only a few. It is not enough. They will die terrified and helpless before Nyx.

Then, a terrible, impossible idea seizes him: Aigis is correct. SEES will only know what is coming for them if they know of the Dark Hour. His existence is the divergence that brings about the Dark Hour. If he were to die, then they would cease to be aware of the Dark Hour. They could live the handful of days they have left peacefully, without fear. They would never know the existential horror that lurks in their future.

Isn’t it better to die with no regrets, than to die in terror?

He had been cruel. In this small way, he can make amends.

“Give me time,” he whispers to the moon, his voice thin and cracked. He’s barely holding back tears as he stares up at the sky. The moon looks back at him and is indifferent to his misery. He swallows thickly. “Please, give me a little more time to make everything right.”

“Who are you talking to?” Aigis asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ryoji says. “But there is something I can do.”

Aigis tilts her head in inqury. “I do not understand. What will you do?”

Ryoji takes a shuddering breath.

“I’m going to give them a choice.”

He walks away from Aigis, and does not care that his back is to her. She cannot harm him, and now she knows it. The only person he will let harm him is Minato. It is the only way to pay his debts. He sinks to the ground behind a stopped car, his back pressed against the bumper bar and his knees drawn up to his chest. Now he sobs, breath hitching in his throat, tears hot on his face. Everything had been easier ten years ago, when he did not know humanity and so did not love them. Everything had been easier before he had been sealed into Arisato Minato, the two of them shaping one another. Everything had been easier the last time had been on the Moonlight Bridge, where all he knew was his purpose.

He allows himself a moment to cry, then wipes his face with the trailing end of his scarf. The rest of SEES will come soon, and there is no one else but him who can ease their suffering. He must tell him what they need to know in order to make the right choice.


End file.
